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I bought the game because I love everything Noir and playing detective, but it's more like a point and click adventure without the clever stuff.

Questioning folks is interesting the first time but gets really dull and annoying after a while, driving is a hassle because it's clunky and you get stuck on everything and the chasing of dudes isn't all that entertaining.

The best thing in LA Noire is trying to kill people on the sidewalks. You generally can't just shoot people, and you can't punch them either. Using a car is pretty tricky, but it feels great when you finally slam right into someone. However, the best thing is just to run around getting people to fall down near cars. You can easily gather a huge group of people and have them constantly falling over each other. Eventually one will hit their head the wrong way and die.

Besides that, the city and people look pretty great and the stories are all pretty good. It's just too bad that the detective work is so adventure gamey, and the interview process made me want to throw my monitor across the room. Pro Tip: You can make wild accusations and then BACK OFF when you realize you don't actually have the evidence. No one seems to care if Phelps accuses some old lady of murder unless he then shows her some random receipt or whatever. He just shrugs it off and then claims he knew she was telling the truth all along.

Also, it's worth playing so that you can then walk around in the real world picking up random items, rotating them in exactly the way that no human being ever would, saying, "Circumstantial," and then putting them back down. Great at parties.

My main issue with LA Noire was that I never felt like I was really solving a mystery; I felt like I was doing minigames to unlock clips in which the characters solved the mystery for me, until I reached the interrogations and then just kind of guessed at things (tip for anyone thinking of playing the game: from my experience, the Doubt option is the same as the Lie option, except for when you don't have evidence).

and I think I'm done for this year. Borderlands 2 and Far Cry 3 I'm saving for later next year when I get a new rig.

Both HAWX and Scribblenauts were sort of impulse buys. HAWX was €2.50, and had a craving for an arcadey aeroplane-shooter. Scribblenauts was a silly thing, I watched a couple of youtube videos, laughed my arse off, and then immediately bought it. It was only -33% sale too, and it's only available in February... but there was a guy riding an ant! You can't say no to riding ants?

Kind of tempted by Giana Sisters for a fiver on the flash sales. Anyone played it?

There's a demo on steam if you're up for it. My impressions from the demo were mixed, but I'll pick it up sooner or later. It's a decent platformer with the added gimmick of being set in two parallel dimensions. Probably worth the money, but I'll wait.